Louise rippled another appreciative laugh. "Oh, dear!" she cried, clapping her hands together. "It's too funny for anything! How you startled Betty! Why, even Lawford Tapp was amazed at your appearance. You--you do look like an old pirate, Uncle Abram." "Don't I?" responded Cap'n Abe, childishly delighted. "That awful scar along your jaw--and you so brown," said the girl. "How did you get that scar, Uncle Abram?" "Fallin' down the cellar steps when I was a kid," said the storekeeper. "But these fellers think I must ha' got it through a cutlass stroke, or somethin'. Oh, I guess I've showed 'em what a real Silt should look like. Yes, sir! I cal'late I look the part of a feller that's roved the sea for sixty year or so, Niece Louise." "You do, indeed. That red bandana--and the earrings--and the mustache--and stain. Why, uncle! even to that tattooing----" He looked down at his bared arm and nodded proudly. "Ye-as. That time I went away ten year ago and left Joab to run the store (and a proper mess he made of things!) I found a feller down in the South End of Boston and he fixed me up with this tattoo work for twenty-five dollars. Course, I didn't dare show it none here--kep' my sleeves down an' my throat-latch buttoned all winds and weathers. But now------" He laughed again, full-throated and joyous like a boy. Then, suddenly, he grew grave. "Niece Louise, I wonder if you can have any idea what this here dead-and-alive life all these years has meant to me? Lashed hard and fast to this here store, and to a stay-ashore life, when my heart an' soul was longin' to set a course for 'way across't the world? Sargasso--that's it. This was my Sargasso Sea--and I was smothered in it!" "I think I understand, Cap'n Abe," the girl said softly, laying her hand in his big palm. "An' now, Louise, that I've got a taste of romance, I don't want to come back to humdrum things--no, sir! I want to keep right on bein' Cap'n Am'zon, and havin' even them old hardshells like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup look on me as a feller-salt." "But how------?" "They never really respected Cap'n Abe," her uncle hurried on to say. "I find my neighbors _did_ love him, an' I thank God for that! But they knew he warn't no seaman, and a man without salt water in his blood don't make good with Cardhaven folks. "But Cap'n Am'zon--he's another critter entirely. They mebbe think he's an old pirate or the like," and he chuckled again, "but they sartin sure respect him. Even Bet Gallup fears Cap'n Am'zon; but, to tell ye the truth, Niece Louise, she used to earwig Cap'n Abe!" "But when the _Curlew_ arrives home?" queried the girl suddenly. "Hi-mighty, ye-as! I see _that_," he groaned. "Looks to me as though somethin'll have to happen to Abe Silt 'twixt Boston and this port. And you'll have to stop your father's mouth, Louise. I depend upon you to help me. Otherwise I shall be undone--completely undone."